Tag Archives: wow

If you’ve attended a SMACC conference or heard anything about them, you will be aware that it is the most exciting, inspiring, interesting, and educational critical care conference ever.

It is a non-profit venture dedicated to getting the best educators, clinicians, and researchers in intensive care, emergency medicine, prehospital/retrieval medicine and anaesthesia to share their knowledge, for free, through the medium of FOAM, embracing physicians, nurses, paramedics, and students.

You can’t look at the program without being blown away. Just look at the preconference workshops and you’ll become vertiginous trying to get your head around the the fact you can’t be in two places at once.

Why am I raving about this? What’s in it for me?

Like the other presenters I make no money from this – I dedicate my time, energy and passion for critical care and am so privileged to be a part of it. But as a do-everything-at-the-last-possible-minute emergency physician, registering for a conference is the kind of thing I’m often inclined to leave a few weeks until I can get round to it. But you CAN’T AFFORD to do that for SMACC Chicago. Not only will you waste money by missing the early registration discount, you might miss out completely: I anticipate registrations will be oversubscribed fast (this is the most anticipated conference EVER) and if you leave it too late you won’t be able to come and will be confined to the crowd who are forced to hear how great it was after the event from the people who were organised enough to actually get there.

So don’t miss out! You’ll feel like a muppet! Treat yourself to the best education at the best conference ever – pull your finger out now and register. And I’ll see you there.

SMACC was my all-time favourite conference ever. Its sequel, smaccGOLD, promises to be even better, as you’ll see from the program

The smaccGOLD online registration goes live this Monday 16th September at 8am in Sydney

This will be 11pm Sunday 15th in London, and 6pm Sunday 15th in New York

Make sure you don’t miss your chance to register for the best critical care conference ever!

Also check out the preconference workshops – a jawdropping line-up of medical masters covering everything you’d want to learn. The only difficult part is deciding what you won’t go to! Places are limited and expected will sell out quickly. Registration is on a first come basis.

Hopefully we’ll see you there.

smaccGOLD is a not-for-profit venture and I receive no payment for any participation in the conference or its promotion

from the New Scientist site:
“It’s not a bird or a plane: it’s an unusual flying object that propels itself by flipping inside out. Created by engineers at Festo in Esslingen, Germany, the floating band filled with helium takes on different shapes while expanding and contracting to generate thrust and move through the air.“

I can’t imagine what it was like to go through what Fred Ettish went through. I remember being stunned at the overwhelming failure of his Karate in one of the early UFC fights in the mid-nineties, and gave no thought to the man inside the gi. I may even have been one of the viewers who felt some Schadenfreude at the apparent humiliation of traditional karate by Western boxing.

Now I see this man in a different light. Someone who has lost almost almost everything, yet refused to give in. I have no idea how I would react to such adversity, and never want to be tested in such a way. For an inspiring demonstration of spirit, watch this video that brought a tear to my eye. At around two minutes in you will see this is not about martial arts. This is about courage and strength and there is something to learn here for all of us.

This is the daughter of my friend. Avery is only seven months old and has survived a critical illness and is thankfully now fully recovered. Her Dad has nothing but praise for the medical and nursing staff who cared for her. But one thing could have been better. Avery endured multiple attempts at vascular access without ultrasound guidance.

If you were her parent, and you were an emergency physician with galaxy-class expertise in emergency ultrasound, how would you react? Complaints? Incident forms? Outrage?

How about education? For free. Accompanied by lavish praise for the experts who treated Avery and made her better.

Avery’s Dad is ultrasound podcaster and gentleman Dr Matt Dawson. He is offering FREE ultrasound training to anyone who wants to improve their vascular access skills.

Are there nurses, physicians, or technicians in your ED or ICU that could improve their care with this training? Please consider sending them for this training. To register for the course, and to read Avery’s full story, go to notapincushion.com.

And if you’re already comfortable with ultrasound-guided vascular access, then visit the site anyway, as there is some education here for all of us: how to turn a gut-wrenchingly distressing experience into something positive that will benefit countless others. I am thoroughly inspired.